A new video from the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art's Louisiana Channel profiles landscape architect Kate Orff, founding principal of SCAPE and professor at Columbia University. Speaking in SCAPE's Lower Manhattan studio, Orff discusses her background, what drew her to landscape architecture, and what she is trying to achieve in Living Breakwaters and other projects.
Kate Orff has been a familiar name since at least 2017, when she was a recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship—one of the few people in the realms of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning who have received such an accolade. Orff received the fellowship for “designing adaptive and resilient urban habitats and encouraging residents to be active stewards of the ecological systems underlying our built environment.” Then in 2023 she received attention when SCAPE's Living Breakwaters project won that year's Obel Award. The jury described Living Breakwaters as “a visionary project that tackles the full task of adaptation, and which has the capacity to inspire and to positively impact vulnerable shorelines worldwide.”
Images of Living Breakwaters and other SCAPE projects, including Tom Lee Park in Memphis and China Basin Park in San Francisco, are interspersed with Orff speaking in her New York studio. Watch the 19-minute video below or on the Louisiana Channel website.